"If you want to win you must not lose" – Number One "The one who flies is worthy. The one who is worthy flies. The one who doesn't fly isn't worthy" – motto on Grunf's pilot T-shirt (possibly the original Italian sentence is a Fascist slogan devised by Italo Balbo) "To get the end, you must go back to the start" - Grandmother Yelsh "Better to wear down your feet running than to die with unworn feet." - another motto from Grunf's T-shirt "Forgot to breathe" - inscription on a tombstone "Beaten by mosquitoes cal. 7,62" - inscription on a tombstone "Better to live hundred years as a millionaire, than one week in poverty!" - Bob Rock "Easiest way to turn defeat into a victory is to put on the enemy's uniform" - Number One "Drugs make you feel you are in heaven, when in fact you are in hell" - Number One "Better strategic retreat than dishonorable defeat" - Number One "My dear Methuselah, you are young and strong while I am weak and old" - Number One (talking to the biblical Methuselah) "Buy flowers for the beloved woman, but don't forget your own [woman]" - Ad on the flower shop

The active portion of FRUAdom is small, and perhaps continuing to shrink.

My last three posts on UA Mailing List have gotten no response.

For the many old-timers that have popped up to say "hello" on this Forum, very few have remained active. We don't get a lot of new members becoming active when they join, and few of these remain active. (I hope we hear from GoldBoxFan again, soon!)

Now, it should be clear from my credentials that I'm one of the biggest die-hards in our community, so my comments shouldn't be seen as waving the white flag of surrender.

However, we might consider, and at least discuss, if there's more that we could do to attract new blood here...

I'll be happy to address the underlying serious issues (even though this poll was meant to be tongue-in-cheek). Here's my take:

All things come to an end. I'm not saying that the UA community is coming to an end at this point in time, but eventually, it will end. It might not happen for another 30 years, or even 60 years. But, the reality is that each year away from the original release date and the memories of the Gold-Box era makes it harder to attract new people. That's just a fact of life. And, another fact of life is that even us long-time veterans will eventually go away, whether by our choice or not (and by that, I mean I was 24 when UA came out and I rushed out to buy it, and today I am 45. As much as I would like to be using UA 50 years from now, I don't even know if I'll still be around in 50 years, or that any of you will be either).

In order to bring in new people, they have to have access to the tools in order to play or design games. This isn't easy, given UA's commercial status. We don't own the rights to it, we can't distribute it, and we don't even share links showing people where they can find it. Add to that the complexity of DOSBox to people who don't understand how it works or have zero experience with DOS as an operating system, and you can see the gap widening.

We advertise as best we can. I mention the forums on gaming and RPG websites whenever I can, especially during any discussion of Gold-Box games. Some of the abandonware sites point to us as a place for people to go if they download a copy. The Wiki page, the Facebook page and several fan pages point to us too. The problem with these is that unless someone is specifically looking for UA (or Dungeon Craft), they're not going to find us.

Dungeon Craft could well be the salvation of the UA community. Some of you fight it. Even I don't think it's quite as well laid out as UA or quite ready for prime-time, but it does a lot of things that UA can't do. It also runs in a Windows environment and the coders are people that the community can directly talk to and help shape what becomes of the project. Same is true of the IceBlink Engine, as we have a direct line to the people programming that (and they were very excited to team up with our community).

I know they aren't UA. There will likely never be another UA, and we probably won't get the option to tinker with the source code (though rumors say that it still exists out there, but it's possible that EA owns it at the moment, so good luck with liberating it). But they are very, very similar. The same kind of adventures can be created as well as things not even possible in UA.

In my perfect world, we would be able to replicate UA in a Windows environment and make it so that anyone can download it for free. We would loosen up a lot of the restrictions, modernize the interface while still making it user friendly, and make it compatible with all that has come before. In my perfect world, I would even program something like this if I had people to help and who could provide artwork for the interface (my own programming project is very similar to a UA style game in a lot of ways). Because, something that the community owned could be advertised, given away for free, etc.

So, maybe the community is dying. But, it doesn't have to. I would certainly like to hear suggestions from people about how we can keep it alive.

I just have to say that there is not much people interested in Ad&d i know of, that would give it a serious try. But no matter what am sure DC will be my long time learning project. I think this place was good when i got here, i still think it is best place i know of i just wish that it stays for long long time and hopefully gets better. People here are very cool and i just think sometimes i am not that good lol to be here but i will try to be more serious and focused in the future. Currently I am running Ad&d campaign on Roll20 i really didn't thought that it will be happening but if i somehow synchronize it with DC it might be very cool for everyone. Only thing that i have problem with is that i need to make something original, big and in my own system/way but i guess i will be working on Ad&d at the same time.

All things come to an end. I'm not saying that the UA community is coming to an end at this point in time, but eventually, it will end. It might not happen for another 30 years, or even 60 years.

60 years from now, the human mortality problem will be solved, the world will be run by robots (giving us immortal humans lots of free time), a free version of FRUA will have been reverse-engineered by a sentient artificial intelligence, I will task my computer minions with creating an Unlimited Adventures module, and Dungeon Craft will be on version 0.999999999999327.

Of course, we do not endorse those places where we do not send people.

Nevertheless, it is of interest to look at their stats. Site A records 1552 downloads (starting in 2011?). Site B had 1544 people rate it with an average of 3.3. The posted comments began in 2006, and the most recent was 2010. A lotta people used it and liked it over the years.

I wonder how many ever reached FRUAdom, proper, however. That is, our community, rather than simply one or two personal webpages of indivdual FRUAites.

Of course, there's no way of knowing, just like there's no way of knowing if the vast majority of our own members may have gotten their copy of UA from one of those places we don't send people.

Even so, this Forum has been, and should be, run in a Lawful Good manner, which, I'm sure, provides the greatest benefits to all our members.

Personally, I don't think it would be a big deal if we provided links in a sticky. We wouldn't be hosting it here, and if anyone said something about it, we could remove the links (highly unlikely this would ever happen). Also, the original company is long since gone, and there is no real information on who actually has the rights to the system (if anyone does). I read something recently that EA got their hands on some of the properties (like the "Eye of the Beholder" series), but that doesn't mean that they have everything or that they have the Gold-Box systems. (Though, they did confirm that they had all the source code for everything that they did get, so some part of me wishes that they did only to know that the source code would be intact...but then again, knowing EA, the world would never see it).